What the Armed Forces Can, Can’t, and Might Do at the Border
Ryan Burke | November 20, 2018
President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the military to the US southern border generated heated debate prior to this month’s midterm elections—where immigration policy continued to be a leading agenda item. Media outlets nationwide reported the deployment with a consistent narrative. But almost all of the reporting failed to address the nuance and complexity of the situation. Even some on-air military analysts made superficial statements about what the military can and can’t do at the border.
This isn’t surprising. Save for a small, niche group of scholars and practitioners well versed in the subject, most people in the media and general public (and many in the military, as well) are wholly ignorant to what the armed forces can and can’t do on US soil. With the media abuzz reporting on a military deployment to stop what the president refers to as a migrant caravan “invasion,†this is a timely and relevant discussion; one that requires clarification and facts rather than media reports that are misinformed and misleading at best, and manipulative at worst. And that’s my intent here. I’ll do this by answering two simple questions: What can the military do at the border? And what can’t it do? Examining the specific legal and policy issues at the center of the debate yields a conclusion many readers might be surprised by.
https://mwi.usma.edu/armed-forces-can-cant-might-border/
